


dRuNk/Like I Would/Let Me/Dusk Till Dawn

by watyonameisgurl



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: M/M, Rated T for language, and i figured why not throw in a bit of back story and a conclusion, apparently i’m on a song-inspired fic kick lately lol, but this was also mainly just an excuse to get out my headcanon for the story behind like i would, by exploring a couple of the other songs too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-19
Updated: 2018-04-19
Packaged: 2019-04-24 20:07:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14362683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/watyonameisgurl/pseuds/watyonameisgurl
Summary: “Happy birthday, I guess,” Zayn says, trying and failing to keep the bitterness out of his voice at the fact that this is his third call and Liam still hasn’t answered. At the fact that he’s withher. At a party that Zayn wasn’t invited to...Or: A series of drabbles based on the themes of the aforementioned songs…basically my headcanons for the moments that inspired these songs (these aren’t songfics though)





	dRuNk/Like I Would/Let Me/Dusk Till Dawn

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Before anyone gets mad at me for this i wanna make clear that this is not at all meant to make Liam off to be the bad guy even though it might come off that way at first, this is just an expression of my headcanon of how Zayn might have seen/felt about things at the time based on my interpretation of the songs and seeing as this is told from a very one-sided pov things are gonna come off skewed just like they would in real life
> 
> *Also the interlude part is not meant to be a reference to the actual song called interlude from m.o.m. it’s just a general interlude in the story, like a break to set up for the shift in the narrative while still keeping in line with the song theme by using song/music terminology

**dRuNk**

Zayn feels like Liam’s invaded his senses. Like all he eats, sleeps, and breathes anymore is Liam. _Liam Liam Liam_. He’d never known it was possible to feel so intoxicated by someone before but that’s how it feels whenever he’s in Liam’s orbit. Like he’s shifted into another plane of existence where the only thing in focus is Liam, the only thing he can smell, see, hear, taste, touch, is Liam, everything else blurring to the background like white noise.

Late summer nights stumbling into hotel rooms together, eyes red and words slurring together, hands and lips mapping out each other’s skin till they’re breathless with want and all the things they’re too afraid to say in the light of day.

Zayn feels like the summer passes in a haze and every second spent apart from Liam feels like going through withdrawal. He wants Liam to know how much he needs him, how much Zayn feels like he can’t _breathe_ without him, but he doesn’t wanna scare Liam away. Liam has this heady kind of effect on him though, makes him want to pour out everything inside him and never stop.

But Zayn always wakes up to an empty bed because Liam never stays till the morning. Half acts like this _whatever_ between them is just a transient thing and Zayn’s not sure how much of it is Liam convincing himself that’s how _Zayn_ sees it or just Liam being unwilling to admit to himself that this might actually _be_ something. Not that it really matters. Because they don’t talk about it in the light of day, the hazy memories half lost to drunken amnesia and the ones purposefully forgotten, purposefully buried to keep things from becoming too real. But when night hits and the drinks start flowing again they’re both too gone to stop. Gone on this life, gone on each other, gone on what might just be love.

 

**Like I Would**

“Happy birthday, I guess,” Zayn says, trying and failing to keep the bitterness out of his voice at the fact that this is his third call and Liam still hasn’t answered. At the fact that he’s with _her_. At a party that Zayn wasn’t invited to because she’s a vindictive—Zayn stops the thought before he can finish it. He won’t call her what he’s really thinking, even if she is. He hates using that word for any woman but if there was ever a case for someone who deserved it, it would be her. The way she drags Liam around like he’s some sort of fucking prize to be won, makes him feel like shit about himself on a near-constant basis, and then flashes that sweet smile for the cameras, lapping up the attention and milking it for all she can get while Liam walks around like a ghost, forcing his way through all the photo ops of fake dates and couple’s outings. She’d hooked her claws into him from the start like a lion going for its prey and Liam—sweet, trusting Liam—had bashfully welcomed the attention like a sunflower desperately seeking the light, unaware of the insidious ulterior motives lurking behind her carefully crafted facade until she finally showed herself for what she really was.

Now that Liam knows the truth he mostly just tolerates her, but what really pisses Zayn off is that he fact he’s _still_ choosing _her_. He think he needs her. In some fucked up incarnation of the storybook ending he’s likely made up for himself in his head—a wife and a white picket fence and all that other bullshit. Doesn’t want to handle what confronting the truth about whatever this is between him and Zayn might mean for him. For himself, for their careers, for their images. Zayn worries about that too. Of course he does. But he doesn’t think it’s fair to just throw away what they could be, what they could have, for the sake of all of that. Because what is love if it’s not worth a risk, even one as big as this one, for a chance at a lifetime of happiness? Liam’s clearly chosen to go the route of pretending like none of that matters though. Like none of anything that’s happened between them the last few months—hell, the last two _years_ —matters.

So yeah Zayn’s bitter.

But if Liam wants to be selfish enough to pull a dick move like this, that’s fine. Because two can play at that game.

“Hope you’re having a good time,” he says, not even trying to hide the sarcasm in his voice this time round, even knowing how it’ll come off. Because they haven’t talked in a while—or what constitutes a while for them anyway, codependent as they’ve all become—mostly because of who Zayn knows he’s with right now. So him leaving an acid-laced voicemail like this while he’s out for a smoke is a pretty shitty thing to do, especially when the last time they talked was on such good terms.

But he also knows that he doesn’t really need to explain himself because Liam will know exactly why he’s so angry, no matter how much Liam might try to keep up the game of pretending like he doesn’t. That’s one of the things he loves about Liam, that he knows Zayn so well, knows exactly how to gauge his moods and how to respond or how not to respond, when to give him space and when to crowd him in because he’s not usually one to be very vocal about his emotions though Liam sometimes brings it out of him. But at moments like these it’s both a blessing and curse because as much as Liam brings out the good in him he’s also one of the only ones who can get Zayn riled up enough to go and do something stupid and shitty like this. No going back now though, he’s already in too deep. He might as well finish what he started and lay his bed.

“Don’t bother calling back when you get this cause I probably won’t answer. Be too busy getting smashed with Lou. Just thought I’d give the birthday boy my regards. Give Danielle a one-fingered salute for me, and enjoy your shitty birthday sex. Just remember she’ll never fuck you like I would.”

He drops the butt of his cigarette to the ground, crushes it under his boot in the same moment he pockets his phone. He knows he’ll regret it later. It was a cruel thing to say regardless and that’s on top of the fact that he and Liam haven’t even gone that far yet. But he’d come out here in a really good mood, buzzing and high on life and just wanting a moment to share it with Liam and wish him a happy birthday, only to have all his calls ignored while Liam spends the night with _her_. So sue him for feeling a bit vindictive and wanting to bring Liam down with him like Liam did him. He’s only human, and a pretty shitty one at that, he knows that. He’s still a thousand times better than _her_. But Liam’s clearly made his choice. And now Zayn’s made his.

 

_**Interlude** _

Things come to a bit of a head in Vegas and the irony of the city’s tagline isn’t lost on Zayn. He’s half convinced at this point that the universe is just fucking with him for shits and giggles. And Liam’s not much better to be honest. Keeps turning those sad eyes on him like a lovesick puppy as if Zayn doesn’t have every right to be angry. He’s sick of the games. Sick of the back and forth. Sick of Liam fucking around with his heart because Liam can’t figure out—or better yet can’t admit—what he really wants.

 _She’ll_ do something shitty yet again and every time Liam comes running to him for comfort, only to go right back to her. Acts all apologetic and plays dumb like he doesn’t know what he’s doing is fucked up. But he can’t have it both ways and Zayn’s done. Or at least that’s what he tells himself. Until the moment Liam comes back to him again and then he’s right back where he started.

This time though. This time he’s truly reached his limit. And he damn well makes sure Liam knows it. Won’t speak to him, won’t look at him, won’t even acknowledge his presence, even when Liam sings right to him, and Zayn doesn’t care who notices. He’s too angry to think about anything or anyone else right now and it only goes up tenfold when, after, Liam comes to find him and has the nerve to act like he doesn’t know what he did. What he’s _been_ doing this whole fucking time and Zayn can’t. He explodes. All the pent up rage and hurt pouring out of him at once.

Liam at least has the decency to look ashamed once everything’s out in the open. Makes all these apologies and promises and Zayn honestly doesn’t know whether to believe him after everything. But just like always when it comes to Liam, Zayn’s resolve inevitably crumbles. He’s still feeling too much that he doesn’t eve know how to process right now but Liam is so close and Zayn can’t help himself. Never could with Liam.

He’s honestly not even sure who’s actually the first to make the move. If you were to ask him later he couldn’t tell you, but it doesn’t much matter. What matters is Liam’s lips against his and the way he feels pressed skin to skin to him and the fact that he stays. For once he stays. And Zayn thinks maybe this is his way of solidifying all the promises he made. Bringing what for so long felt like a dirty little secret, something to keep hidden in hushed tones in the dark of night, into the light. Dares to hope that this thing between them might really truly _finally_ have the chance to become something real. 

 

**Let Me**

Liam’s stayed till the morning every night together since and Zayn’s hopeful. Wants the chance to show Liam all that they can be, all that _he_ can be for Liam if Liam will let him. Wants to show him that every second they spend together _means_ something, that the moments they share—the conversations, the laughter, the sex, even the quiet moments spent laying together doing nothing at all— _mean_ something. Wants to show him what _real_ love can look like, feel like, what it means to have someone who truly cares about him. To have someone who doesn’t want him just to use him, who appreciates Liam for all that he is and would do whatever it takes to show Liam just how amazing he is until he believes it too. And Zayn thinks to himself that maybe he’ll have it, that chance.

This thing between them is still so new. Officially anyway. Vegas and iTunes and Germany still feels like only yesterday even as the weeks and months pass. But days off spent wrapped up together in the duvet and in each other, dessert for breakfast and the sun of countless nameless cities filtering in through the windows feel like the best dream he could have ever hoped to wake up to. Movie dates and balcony views and walks on the beach mixed in with stage antics and video game wars and late night dance-offs because no more are the nights relegated to secrecy and willful amnesia. Now the two of them gravitate easily to each other like planets in orbit. And Liam is still just as intoxicating as ever, but not in a way that leaves Zayn feeling heavy and hungover and regretful in the morning. More like the most pleasant and ever-constant buzz, like a fine wine instead of a too-strong cheap liquor, a feeling that Zayn thinks he’d be happy to live with for a long, long time.

And things aren’t always perfect. Zayn had still had his doubts at first, in the back of his mind—that maybe this wouldn’t last, that maybe he would do something to mess it up,that he might show too much of himself and scare Liam away. But as the weeks turn into months and the months turn into years and the years go by those doubts fade away. Because Zayn may not know everything. But he knows now that what they have isn’t fleeting or trivial, isn’t something that can be so easily broken, no matter what anyone else might think. What they have is forever. And they’ll have the rest of their lives together to prove it.

 

**Dusk Till Dawn**

Sometimes the days get hard. Sometimes the nights are even harder. When the bed feels too big and too cold and too empty and he can’t sleep. When he’s been on his own for too long without Liam to calm him down and he snaps. Or when the stunts pile up on both ends, vile story after story that he doesn’t mean to see, hadn’t even been looking for, but does and he can’t help but get into one of his moods. Or when it feels like everything’s caving in on him at once and all the pressure gets to be too much to handle.

People see him on an off day and think he’s being aloof or rude, or misunderstand a joke that back home would’ve been no big deal and they make assumptions. They read what they read and hear what they hear and they see the way he looks and think he must see himself the same way they see him. That he must think of himself in some elevated way, like he’s above everyone else or like he’s trying too hard to be seen as different or edgy when really he’s just him. He’s just him. And all he wants is the _freedom_ to be him in all that that entails. And the same for Liam.

Because they may be able to be more open now than they’ve ever been allowed to be before but they’re still nowhere near where want to be, where they’d hoped to be by now. It’s still like a breath of fresh air, being free of most of the madness of all the behind the scenes bullshit they’d had to put up with for so long. Being able to do more and more without having to constantly look over their shoulders or second guess themselves or worry whether they’ll be berated for just being themselves. And he knows Liam feels it too. That little pocket of relief every time they’re able to make a secret getaway or do or say something a little obvious that before would’ve been outright shut down on the spot.

But that doesn’t make the days apart any less hard. Or make it any easier to deal with the longing to touch Liam,to feel him skin to skin or wake up to his crinkly smiling face in the morning or feel the warmth of the sun washing over them as they they make love, deep and slow and passionate. To be able to hold him when he’s upset or have Liam do the same for him.

He knows though that even in those moments when they’re an ocean apart that Liam is always with him. In the little things, like the rings and the necklaces and the bracelets and the clothes that they wear like badges of honor. But also etched into his skin in ink, as permanent as the space he fills in Zayn’s heart. Just like Zayn is for him.


End file.
